Social networks require regulation followup
6th April 2008 by David North
Just a quick note to follow up the previous post “Social networks require regulation”. The general conclusions from others and myself was that regulation is very difficult. I was quite surprised to read that the Government have actually come up with a good scheme to help the protection of children on social internet sites. Essentially sex offenders would be banned from certain websites by distributing their registered email addresses to the said websites. In addition having email addresses not registered with the authorities could land the offender with 5 years inside.
This isn’t a foolproof solution but it’s certainly a step that should hope to discourage some parties.
I am still in the agreement with the argument put forward on the BBC news breakfast programme last week where the social media expert that was speaking to the reporters suggested that if someone is as criminally minded as to stalk children as well as collect illicit images of children, then they’re not going to be perturbed by the fact that signing up for a ‘throw away’ email address is trouble free. Yes they can be imprisoned for 5 years by being found out by I don’t see how this can possibly be policed when these people will go to all sorts of lengths to hide the fact.
I totally agree but if this stops one person it’s a success.
I think it’s more the kind of tactic that we should be taking - trying to think of alternative ways of making life increasing difficult for these people. It isn’t much so far but it is a step in the right direction.